The present invention relates to an apparatus of fabricating and a method of fabricating a liquid ejection head and a liquid ejection head.
There are known liquid ejection heads each for ejecting a pressurized liquid from a nozzle opening as liquid drops constituting an object thereof by various liquids, and as a representative one among them, an ink jet type recording head can be pointed out. Hence, a background art will be explained by taking an example of the ink jet type recording head.
The ink jet type recording head (hereinafter, referred to as recording head) is provided with a plurality of a series of flow paths reaching nozzle openings from a common ink chamber via pressure generating chambers in correspondence with the nozzle openings. Further, in view of a request for small-sized formation, it is necessary to form the respective generating chambers by a fine pitch in correspondence with a recording density. Therefore, a wall thickness of a partition wall portion for partitioning the contiguous pressure generating chambers becomes extremely thin. Further, a flow path width of an ink supply port communicating the pressure generating chamber and the common ink chamber is further narrowed more than that of the pressure generating chamber in order to efficiently use an ink pressure in the pressure generating chamber for delivering ink drops.
Further, the pressure generating chamber is formed by subjecting a pressure generating chamber forming plate made of a metal to die pressing.
Further, a nozzle plate formed with the nozzle opening is fabricated by a metal plate in view of a request for workability or the like. Further, a diaphragm portion for changing a volume of the pressure generating chamber is formed by an elastic plate. The elastic plate is constituted by a double structure of pasting a resin film onto a support plate made of a metal and is fabricated by removing a portion of the support plate in correspondence with the pressure generating chamber.
Patent Reference 1: JP-A-2004-98166
Meanwhile, according to the recording head of the background art, in order to form the pressure generating chamber included therein, the pressure generating chamber forming plate made of a metal is subjected to pressing which is forging. In the pressing, when a shape of a die is not proper for a shape of a part to be worked, a worked surface is deteriorated. For example, in the case of forming a groove-like recess portion for forming the pressure generating chamber by pressing a die to a metal material plate, when there is an angular portion at a portion of the die, the angular portion is brought into a state of being strongly rubbed to the metal material plate and therefore, a surface portion of the metal material plate is brought into a state of being cut off and there is a concern of deteriorating a quality of finishing an inner face of the groove-like recess portion.
On the other hand, according to the recording head of the background art, the wall thickness of the partition wall portion is extremely thin and therefore, it is difficult to uniformly set a liquid containing volume of the pressure generating chamber or the like by accurately providing a recess shape of the pressure generating chamber. The recess shape is generally constituted by a slender shape frequently, a length of the partition wall portion is prolonged by that amount and therefore, it is important to accurately fabricate the partition wall portion over an entire length thereof in view from uniformly ensuring the liquid containing volume. Particularly, in order to provide the recess shape in a proper shape, it is regarded to be important to sufficiently ensure a height of the partition wall portion between the recess shapes at a fabrication stage.